Deviled Clams
Wash two dozen clams and place them in a dripping pan in a hot oven long enough to open them; take out the clams, separate them from their liquor and chop fine, add about a pint of bread crumbs, then the liquor and a little pepper, butter the shells and put this mixture in on the top of each one; place a small piece of butter and a few more bread crumbs, bake about ten minutes in a hot oven.
A short recipe that assumes you know what a stuffed clam shell should look like. The proportions need a cook's eye, and the clam liquor is where the whole dish succeeds or fails.
- The hinge: strain the liquorClams shed sand as they open, and it settles in the pan juices. Pour the liquor through a fine sieve or a coffee filter before it goes into the crumbs, or the filling will grit on the teeth.
- "Hot oven"In period usage roughly 400-450F, both for opening the clams and for the final ten minutes. The first stage takes several minutes at that heat; pull them as soon as the shells gape rather than waiting for the last stubborn one.
- A pint of bread crumbsThat is 2 cups of dry crumbs, which is generous for two dozen clams and will read as bready. Add the liquor gradually and stop when the mixture is moist and holds together loosely; hold back crumbs rather than adding more liquid.
- Which clamsHard-shell clams — quahogs, cherrystones or littlenecks. Two dozen cherrystones give enough meat for the mixture and enough deep half-shells to fill. Discard any that were already open and would not close when tapped.
- "Deviled" with no devilOnly pepper is specified. If you want the heat the name implies, cayenne, dry mustard or a little Worcestershire belongs in the crumb mixture, as in some other period versions of the dish.
- Buttering the shellsThe shells are the baking dish. Butter the inside of the deeper halves, set them on a sheet pan, and steady them in a bed of coarse salt or crumpled foil so the filling does not slide out.
- YieldThe recipe implies a filled shell for each clam, so the count depends on the size of the clams and how deeply the shells are packed.
"Deviled" in nineteenth-century American cookery meant sharply seasoned, usually with mustard, cayenne or pepper, and the term was applied to anything from crab to ham to a chafing-dish of leftovers. Clams served back in their own shells were a fixture of the Atlantic seaboard, where quahogs were cheap, abundant and dug by the bucket; the same idea survives in New England as stuffed quahogs or "stuffies." A dish built on a pint of bread crumbs and two dozen shellfish is a frugal one, stretching a small amount of meat with the pantry staple most likely to be sitting stale in the bread box.